


Your Halo's Slipping Down

by xsaturated



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 10:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xsaturated/pseuds/xsaturated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doubt can break a person, if they let it. Blaine was never all that put together to begin with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Halo's Slipping Down

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ‘The Noose’ by A Perfect Circle. Includes explicitly addressed infidelity and a fairly brutal interior dialogue, specifically referencing the events of 4x04.

They're just titles, is the thing. The new Rachel, student body class president, member of the sewing club, the superhero sidekicks club. They're masks to try on, a title to plaster over his name so he can say if someone asks, this is who Blaine Anderson is now. 

Not that anyone is exactly asking at the moment.

It's probably funny to somebody, somewhere that none of them seem to work. Or at least not in any way more substantial than a passing, dull sense of accomplishment; not in the absence of what he was. He thinks that maybe he should feel something - that there should be a sense of accomplishment in becoming the lead of the glee club or the newly elected student president. That was more than he had at Dalton - wasn’t it? 

He should feel something. But none of this is really for him, is it? None of it fills the empty space beside him or brings back the safety of knowing that there is at least one person in his world who will celebrate these triumphs, however hollow they are. They are farces for everyone else, a sad transparent act to show just how fine he is, Blaine has never been the type to make a show of hitting rock bottom like Brittany had. 

He breaks quietly.

Sometimes it feels like Kurt is planets away, that he's spinning further out of his orbit with every passing minute and Blaine is being dragged in the opposite direction. They are both only slaves to gravity and the higher Kurt rises, the lower Blaine sinks.

Kurt sounds further away with every phone call (every missed call). So happy that Blaine is starting to wonder if he's ever really heard Kurt happy before.

It's what he wanted for Kurt.

Success, happiness. A place where he truly belongs in the way that Kurt had never really had before. Blaine had pushed him to leave just for those reasons.

He doesn't understand why it has to cost them everything they were. 

Sometimes it's like he's speaking underwater, that when he's talking (when Kurt answers the phone) Kurt can't hear him. Their calls are starting to feel like episodes of the Kurt show, like he's talking to a recording of his boyfriend who has no knowledge of or inclination to find out what is happening in Blaine's life. Sometimes it feels like their whole relationship is about Kurt.

Sometimes Blaine just wishes there was someone who wanted to know about his day, about what he’s feeling or what stupid homework assignment he’s writing, who remembers that he’s running for student body president and _asks_ him about it. 

Sometimes Blaine just wishes someone would listen.

\--

There is something unbelievably cruel in that it takes a victory party and another missed call for him to realise that he doesn't know why he is at McKinley.

Blaine has lived his life since meeting Kurt with a singular focus that even he hadn't recognised until now, it is becoming clear to him now that it is much easier to live for someone else than it is to figure out who you actually are.

He has been Kurt Hummel's boyfriend for so long that the masks he’d once worn don't seem to fit anymore. They only slide off when he tries to pull them on, leave behind a reflection that he doesn't know how to fix.

There's a hollow man in his mirror, a boy who's insides have been scooped out and left behind, strewn across the countryside in a path that follows a direct flight from Ohio to New York. 

Sometimes Blaine hates the boy he sees in the mirror.

It is no wonder Kurt doesn't seem to hear him when he speaks, that nobody seems to hear him any more. Why would anyone want to talk to a boy who doesn't even know who he is? 

Kurt doesn't have time for him. That's the truth of it. Kurt is happy and busy and successful. Kurt is finally admired and respected in the way he has always hoped for and Blaine is his high school Ohio-bound boyfriend whose life is so uninteresting he can't even bring himself to listen to it. So much so that he doesn't even think to ask anymore.

Kurt is soaring the way Blaine had always known he would and all that Blaine is doing is weighing him down.

Maybe Kurt's better off without him.

\--

That’s the thought that lingers, that follows him through his classes and the hallways that are full to the brim of seemingly everyone except the one person that he wants to see. It is starting to hit him now - the realization that maybe he has been mistaken, that holding onto Kurt the way he has been is wrong for both of them. That it is selfish, to cling to something that is desperately trying to break free.

The other glee club members fade in around him, smile sometimes as they pass in the halls or fall into step as they walk to classes, but nobody seems to notice the shallowness of his smiles. He realizes now that he had kept them at a distance last year, that he has remained a stranger to them through no fault except his own stubborn refusal to open himself up. Brittany still calls him Blaine Warbler. Sam had felt like he had to introduce himself when they approached him about becoming his running mate. His tentative ventures towards friendship with the New Directions last year had been on the fringes - people who forced their way in without him noticing. People who were gone.

He had spent his entire Junior year so focused on making sure that Kurt’s senior year was magic, that he hadn’t made any real friends and it hadn’t mattered - not really - because he’d had Kurt. 

It scares him, a little.

He’d been lonely last year, he knows he had been. He remembers that soaring feeling in his chest he’d gotten as he walked through Dalton’s halls to deliver the tickets to _West Side Story_ , how he’d clung to Sebastian’s sporadic and often inappropriate text messages and phonecalls, every overture of friendship, with a stubbornness that Kurt had never understood. It had been a reminder that someone liked him for him - that someone knew him as Blaine Anderson rather than Kurt’s boyfriend.

But all that had crumbled too, hadn’t it? Now he doesn’t have any of it.

Kurt is too busy for him. They can’t even get through a phonecall now; Blaine can barely get two words in before Kurt has to answer another line or hang up because there is someone on the other line who always has the best gossip with a promise to reschedule. There have been a lot of broken promises, recently. Blaine can’t remember the last time they had a proper conversation, the last time Kurt asked him about his day. 

Blaine had thought that sending Kurt off to New York had been setting him free, that they could weather whatever would surely follow. Now he can’t even say the words “I love you” without getting cut off by the sound of a dialtone.

The thing is that he had been absolutely right. Sending Kurt off to New York had set him free, but Blaine hadn’t finished the job. Kurt has moved on, has so thoroughly severed his connections with an enthusiasm that stings and now, well - now Blaine needs to finish the job he started.

He needs to let Kurt go.

\--

It’s a bad day, rounding out a bad week, and the choir room is deserted. An island of quiet in the cacophony of sound and action that McKinley seems to be at all times; a place that is rough and abrasive and still so utterly foreign to him, even after all this time. Last year it hadn’t seemed so bad, with Kurt’s presence around to soften the edges. It had felt like it was worth it, then, the daily struggle to be heard.

Now the effort to raise his voice to be heard seems wasted. Nobody is listening anyway.

He has been waiting for Kurt to respond to a message he’d left on his Facebook wall yesterday for the past half an hour. Refreshing the app on his phone over and over again as the desperation that has been starting to seep in; the part of him that insists this is just another sign, reminds him that he knows what he has to do. This is the third time this week Kurt has blown him off and it’s only Thursday. They’d missed every skype date they’d tried to arrange last week. He knows what it all means.

Still.

He refreshes again, staring hard at his phone as a notification pops up, red and blinding, and he moves to tap it with a finger before he even registers it’s the wrong kind - a friend request. Blaine stares for a moment, wrinkling his nose a little at the sight because he doesn’t recognise the name.

It isn’t the first time. He still sometimes gets friend requests from guys at Dalton, people he’d shared classes with and had really only known by sight and this guy’s profile picture is of a lighthouse. He doesn’t remember an Eli - but that doesn’t mean there hadn’t been one. He clicks accept without another thought, then clicks back to his newsfeed and refreshes again.

\--

The first message shows up a day later.

He’d been checking to see if Kurt had replied to him yet. Instead there is a long list of ‘Kurt Hummel is now friends with’ notifications on his feed, two liked pages and nothing else. He chews his lip, staring hard down at his phone when he notices the notification.

It’s innocuous enough, the name vaguely registering when he sees the little lighthouse next to his name, and he smiles a little, wrinkling his nose because the message is sweet if a little odd. _I saw your post on the LGBTQTeens Lima group and I wanted to say hi. I didn’t think boys like you were allowed to exist in this town._

Blaine refreshes the page again, looking for some sign that maybe Kurt is online. He could try sending him another message. It had probably just gotten buried on his wall by the flood of posts from his new coworkers. But when the page loads again it’s just that same message staring back at him, the odd little icon sticking in Blaine’s mind as he rolls his eyes and clicks to reply, _Ada, actually. I just go to school here_ , licking his lips as he frowns down at the message before hesitantly adding, _I wouldn’t think there was much demand for lighthouses around here either._

His thumb hovers for a moment over the post button before he rolls his eyes at how ridiculous he’s being and sends it. There’s nothing wrong with making a new friend on Facebook. It isn’t like he has an overwhelming amount of offers anywhere else.

\--

 _Cute and sassy. There is a god_ , appears on his wall the next day and he has to bite down on his lip to stop the smile from surfacing. 

There is a nervous tingle in his stomach, the voice that asks, ‘What if Kurt saw that?’ But when he checks there is only another flood of new accepted friend requests on Kurt’s wall and no response to the message he’d sent again last night. He’d gotten a text this morning telling him not to expect a phonecall today - something about working overtime - and it’s the first he had gotten in days that wasn’t the occasional, _Paisley? Yay or nay?_ or _I want to marry these shoes._

His heart pounds the entire time that he holds a thumb poised over Eli C’s profile picture, feeling like maybe he’s crossing a line the longer he hesitates, before he decisively presses his thumb down and his profile page loads. If Kurt’s making new friends and a new life for himself, then maybe Blaine should too.

\--

It’s not like the messages happen every day.

Eli likes or comments on his status updates sometimes and one day he goes through seemingly every album Blaine has uploaded, liking photos. Blaine had rolled his eyes for a start, but then he'd noticed he'd mostly been liking photos Cooper had uploaded and tagged him in where Blaine is pulling awful faces and he'd had to catch himself to keep from laughing.

He knows that it's trouble that he wants to smile when he sees that strange little thumbnail of the lighthouse pop up on his Facebook feed, but he hasn't had a whole lot to smile about recently.

It's a distraction when he needs it in a way that Sam, who is well intentioned and sweet but simply does not get it, can’t be - that Blaine can’t allow him to be. Sam has this way of unintentionally reminding him of things he doesn't want to remember. 

So when Kurt cuts him off mid-sentence, the words 'I love you' dying on the tip of his tongue and he feels tears burning at the back of his eyes, it isn't Sam that he looks for. Instead he hides in the empty choir room and curls his fingers around his phone, swallowing back the lump in his throat as he scrolls through his Facebook feed (Kurt Hummel is now friends with ..) and there it is.

The green dot that tells him Eli is online and the red flash of a notification. Blaine knows that it's completely naive to think that Eli just wants to be friends, not with evidence amassing to the contrary, but he's starting to wonder if it’s so awful for him to question his relationship. He thinks he loves Kurt, but really, what reference does he have? Kurt is his first and only boyfriend and lately, he hasn’t felt like much of one.

If Kurt can move on and be happy as he slowly cuts Blaine out of his life, thread by thread, then maybe Blaine could be too. What if Kurt isn't meant to be his future? Kurt has been a lot of his firsts - but what if he isn't meant to be his last? How many people really ended up with their first boyfriends anyway?

Maybe Eli with his affinity for lighthouses and sweet, silly compliments could be someone for him. Maybe not his ever after, but a happily in between. Maybe, when a private message pops up, shadowing Blaine’s borderline desperate status update ( _Distract me?_ ) and the words, _What’s up, Sexy?_ stare up at him from his phone, he wonders if it would be so wrong to not feel lonely anymore. Being in love was supposed to feel good, wasn’t it?

He’s so tired of being sad.

So maybe when another message follows, Blaine doesn’t even have to think about it.

 _Want to come over?_

Yes, he thinks he does.

\--

Blaine can’t seem to stay still.

He spends the entire drive through town with his heartbeat pounding in his ears, fingers tapping erratically across the top of the steering wheel whenever he has to stop for traffic and the directions Eli had given him to his house seared into his brain. It’s a different side of town than he is used to and the unfamiliar streets are distraction enough to keep his thoughts away from the voice that insists he turn around.

Or at least, they are up until he is parked outside an unfamiliar house, triple checking the number on the letterbox against the one sitting in his messages. It all looks so perfectly ordinary. So utterly suburban when a dark voice in his head keeps insisting that it should look like a brothel; that he should feel sick with himself for even coming here. 

Blaine doesn’t even realise how long he has been sitting there, staring blankly down at the screen of his phone until he hears the soft knock on his window and his head jerks up, eyes widening at the sight of the face he has only ever seen through facebook photos before (tiny thumbnails he had caught himself squinting at because he hadn’t been able to bring himself to click to view the full size). The smile is wide and charmingly toothy, just a little bit lopsided in a way that immediately has Blaine smiling hesitantly back, reaching for the door handle to push it open and trying not to blush at the eyes that blatantly follow the shift of his body getting out of the car.

“Blaine Anderson in the flesh,” Eli says after a long moment, his eyes locking onto Blaine’s as something sweet twitches at the corner of his lips, “How did I get so lucky?”

It’s a stupid thing, a small thing, that makes his heart pound in his chest because he doesn’t remember the last time someone looked at him like that; like they genuinely saw him and actually liked what they found. And Blaine isn’t so far gone that he doesn’t know exactly why he came here, with the graze of Eli’s hand on his shoulder making something longing spark beneath his skin (when was the last time someone touched him like that? Incidental grazes of limbs together that had purpose, that remind him what _Do you want to come over?_ really meant.)

They must have talked, he thinks, stumbling through conversation that makes the heat pooling beneath Blaine’s cheeks burn hot with embarrassment because Eli is sweet and he looks nothing at all like Kurt and he doesn’t know what he is doing here really, except there’s a hand pressed low against his back and Blaine doesn’t pull away. 

Somehow they make it from the car outside, through a house that Blaine barely registers and into a bedroom, then to his bed; perching awkwardly on the edge of the mattress until it dips down and his thigh is suddenly pressed up against Eli’s, heat bleeding through the thin fabric of his shirt where their shoulders are pressed together. His heart is so loud he can hear it, an echoing drumbeat in his ears, as a hand curves to fit the shape of his cheek. The pad of Eli’s thumb strokes the length of his jaw, fingers slipping to turn his chin and there is an exhale, warm and damp across his lips as he tilts his head back. The slightly chapped skin of unfamiliar lips trace the shape of his own and his heart drops, sinking like a stone, because wasn’t this proof?

If Kurt was his and he was Kurt’s, if they are everything he’d thought they would be; the way this boy who he doesn’t even know’s fingers trail softly down the length of his throat, curling into the neck of his shirt, shouldn’t feel like this. 

He shouldn’t press up into the warmth of that mouth, feel the give of them beneath his own or the slight scratch of stubble against his skin and he shouldn’t like it. The steadying splay of the palms of his hands across Blaine’s ribcage; fingers splayed wide as they dig lightly through the material of his shirt into the muscles of his back shouldn’t be welcomed like this.

And when his lips part and the slide of his tongue is met with another; when warm slightly rough fingers slip up beneath his shirt and skim over the skin of his ribs; mouths only parting when his shirt is tugged up over his head and Eli’s quickly follows, landing tangled together on the floor as his back hits the mattress. It shouldn’t be like this. He is supposed to see Kurt in two weeks. He shouldn’t feel like his world is ending when Eli’s lips trace sweet kisses into his neck.

Blaine’s starting to realize that a lot of things that shouldn’t happen, (broken promises and bruised hearts; a gentle kiss when he wants to be proven wrong and the betrayal of his body and his heart because this is wrong, wrong, wrong but when nothing is right anymore, how does he stop himself), just do.

He wants to scrub it off. Every realization written into his skin by the gentleness of it all; like Eli thought he might just shatter if he touched him with any kind of urgency. He wants to forget. To cast off the creeping sickness that crawls into his bones and curls up in his heart to stay because they weren’t okay, they haven’t been okay, but no matter what he wants now his doubt has sealed their fate.

That’s why he runs; why he tugs his shirt on and stumbles down the stairs; mumbling apologies through the tears that sting his eyes because Eli is sweet; why did he have to be sweet, why did he have to treat him so gently when Blaine was clumsily dropping the fragile remains of his relationship to the floor and stumbling over the broken shards in bare feet. 

It hurts because he knows, now. He knows the reason why he was holding on so tightly; why his hands ache with the effort of holding the pieces together when all Kurt does is let go. Maybe Kurt isn’t his forever after; but god he wants him to be. He wishes he could be.

Kurt is known and safety and his first; the first to pry his way in past his walls and make a place for himself there and Blaine has no defences anymore. He has given so much of himself, let his heart crack open and let it empty itself in Kurt because he doesn’t know how to make it stop, that if he doesn’t have Kurt there is nothing left. How does he claim back everything he gave, when none of it is his anymore?

Everything is Kurt’s. 

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? He doesn’t know if he can take it back, if he wants to take it back. All he really wants is Kurt, the way they used to be. Kurt to be _here._ Kurt his boyfriend, not the distant voice that sometimes listens to him on the other side of a broken phoneline. 

But he has broken them, broken himself, and there isn’t a way to fix this.

He’s starting to wonder if there ever really was.

\--

Blaine books a plane ticket to New York that night; the ghost of Eli’s fingertips across his ribs and kisses in the shape of his lopsided smile pressed into his neck buzzing beneath his skin.

There’s a bitter kind of irony in that it’s his first trip to see Kurt.

(And when he sees the way Kurt’s heart breaks, the way he bleeds anger and betrayal in that quiet, empty park, Blaine knows that it will probably also be his last.)

\--


End file.
